The power of flowers draws visitors to Oxbow Orchards

GRAFTON, N.D. — Trevon and Beth Unruh sell a fall flower rooted in ancient times that they produce with an old-fashioned work ethic and market with contemporary techniques.

The owners of

Oxbow Orchards,

together with their six children, grow chrysanthemums in a rainbow of colors on their farm near Grafton. They direct-market them to individual customers and sell them wholesale to boutiques, specialty stores and grocery stores.

This year, the Unruh family produced 10,000 pots of chrysanthemums in colors that include bronze, coral, purple, white and yellow. The Unruhs also sell tri-colored chrysanthemum pots — three chrysanthemums of different colors grown in a single container.

The Unruhs founded Oxbow Orchards in 2008 as an apple orchard. It’s so named because the Oxbow River, a branch of the Park River, used to run through their property. The family sells about 20 varieties of apples, including the perennially popular Zestar, Honeycrisp and Frostbite.

The apples are grown on more than 200 trees in an orchard on their farmstead. Customers purchase bags of apples like Zestar and Honeycrisp for fresh eating, and others, such as Frost Bite, to make apple sauce and cider.

Unruh was conceiving ideas of how to produce a crop on small acreage when he conceived the idea of planting an apple orchard.

“I’ve always been a tree nut,” he said.

Besides planting apple trees and selling their fruit at farmers markets and to customers who come to the farm, Unruh enjoys experimenting with grafting apple trees, and during orchard tours, shows visitors a single tree that has several apple varieties on its branches.

Oxbow Orchards sells apples from late August until mid-October. The Unruhs also sell about 50 gallons of honey made from their bees, and pumpkins and purple fountain grass grown on their farmstead.

Oxbow Orchards’ chrysanthemum sales typically begin in late August and run for about six weeks.

In the past couple years, the chrysanthemum sales have boomed, nudging out apples as their main product.

Oxbow Orchards branched out into chrysanthemums in 2018 after Trevon Unruh visited a family member who grows the flower commercially on a farm near La Crosse, Wisconsin. He figured the chrysanthemums would be a niche crop in northeast North Dakota, which would contribute to the flowers’ marketing success.

Meanwhile, the flowers can be grown on a small piece of land.

“We like to think outside the box,” he said. “Crops don’t have to grow in an 80-acre field to make a living.”

While creative thinking led to the development of Unruh’s chrysanthemum business, a measured approach to its operation has contributed to its success.

“Oxbow Orchards is a great example of local entrepreneurship that hits the mark in a variety of ways related to rural development,” said Dawn Mandt,

Red River Regional Counci

l executive director.

The Red River Regional Council, based in Grafton, is one regional planning council in North Dakota that was established to improve the ability of local governments to plan, address issues and take advantage of opportunities that go beyond county boundaries. The North Dakota counties of Walsh, Nelson, Grand Forks and Pembina make up the Red River Regional Council.

“As a home-grown business, Trevon has created an agriculturally based business that includes fall mums and apples. In its rural setting, delivering a superior quality product, it is a visitor destination in the region,” Mandt said.

“While Oxbow Orchards is a frequent seller at the Farmers Market in Grand Forks, we would sure love to see these customers travel to our countryside and enjoy the full experience that this location has to offer.”

Unruh started the chrysanthemum portion of Oxbow Orchards relatively small so he could gauge the demand and wouldn’t end up with a product that he couldn’t sell.

The Unruhs raised 600 chrysanthemums the first year. The flower’s sales have grown exponentially since then, as each autumn the demand has increased, and in turn, Unruh has planted more chrysanthemums the next spring.

Oxbow Orchards sells about three-quarters of the flowers wholesale; the remainder are direct-marketed from the farm.

A niche market that he has developed is

chrysanthemum sales

to small boutiques in the area that have a loyal customer base that would rather buy from a local business than a large retail store, Unruh said.

Producing a quality product is one of the keys to the success of the chrysanthemum business, he said.

The growing season begins when the Unruhs plant chrysanthemum plugs purchased from a nursery. It takes about a day and a half for the couple and their six children — ages 4 to 17 — to plant the plugs in individual pots.

The pots are placed on fabric-covered ground, lined up in dozens of rows that are a few hundred feet long. Each pot has a drip waterer in it that is fed by an underground irrigation system.

The plants require close monitoring so they don’t dry out and wither. During hot summer days, the Unruhs water them as many as three times a day.

During the growing season, the family also picks out thousands of weeds and cottonwoods that have grown from seeds blown into the containers by the summer wind.

Chrysanthemum production, like apple production and harvesting, requires a lot of hand labor, and the Unruhs work long days to raise flowers that not only are lovely to look at, but hardy enough to last throughout the fall in customers’ yards or inside their homes.

“It’s a good life, but it’s work,” Trevon Unruh said.

During the past five years, the Unruhs’ chrysanthemums have drawn hundreds of North Dakota and Minnesota customers from about a 150-mile radius of Grafton to Oxbow Orchards.

Unruh markets the chrysanthemums by word-of-mouth and through his Facebook page. The page includes his cellphone number, which he frequently answers when he’s working with the flowers, picking apples or making honey.

“It’s been busy, busy, busy, which is good,” Unruh said on Sept. 18 as he watched a steady stream of customers carrying pots of chrysanthemums from the flower plot to their cars. Oxbow Orchards had sold 7,500 of the 2023 crop of chrysanthemums as of that day.

“I always say, ‘It’s miles of smiles,’ ” Unruh said.

He credits the popularity of the direct sales to giving customers an opportunity to have a unique, enjoyable experience at Oxbow Orchards.

“These ladies like to come out and pick the perfect mum,” he said. “It’s a little like picking the perfect Christmas tree with the family.”

Meanwhile, Unruh encourages the men who visit Oxbow Orchards or stop by farmers markets to buy chrysanthemums for their wives, telling them “it’s cheaper than taking them out for supper, and she’ll be happy for a month,” he said.

Oxbow Orchards’ tentative future plans include offering tours, hosting a fall festival and finishing up the interior of the shop building so it can be used for sales.

Unruh believes that perseverance in the core business is essential to the success of businesses like his.

“I tell people when they’re starting something like this, don’t give up just as you’re ready to crest the hill,” Unruh said.